Lebanon elects Joseph Aoun as president after two-year vacancy
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Army commander’s election increases confidence that ceasefire with Israel will hold. Lebanon’s parliament has elected the army commander Joseph Aoun as the country’s new president, ending a more than two-year vacancy and increasing confidence that a ceasefire with Israel will hold.
Aoun received 99 out of 128 votes in the 13th attempt by a deeply divided parliament to elect a new head of state after the departure of the former president Michel Aoun, who is no relation, in October 2022. Aoun was the favoured candidate of international powers such as Saudi Arabia, France and the US, which enjoyed good relations with him in his role as head of Lebanon’s armed forces.
The main task for Aoun is to reassert the role of the Lebanese army, particularly in south Lebanon, where, since the late 1970s, the army’s control has been contested by groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Hezbollah. All armed groups in Lebanon were meant to disarm under a 2004 UN resolution, but Hezbollah retained its arms under the justification that it was the only force that could protect Lebanon from Israel. The Lebanese army has historically been a weak force.
Under the terms of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire signed on 27 November, the Lebanese army is to deploy in south Lebanon, while Hezbollah is meant to withdraw, in what politicians and diplomats have styled as the reclaiming of Lebanese state sovereignty.
Michel Helou, the secretary general of the reformist National Bloc party, who has met Aoun several times, said: “The first priority is the ceasefire and the second is dealing with Hezbollah’s weapons. There is no clear way to disarm Hezbollah, but if [Aoun] wants to be remembered he will have to deal with them.”.
